A group of 20 University College Dublin (UCD) students has started a petition calling for the impeachment of the President of University College Dublin Students’ Union (UCDSU), Katie Ascough, following last week’s revelations about her expunging of abortion information from union materials.
Should they achieve just under 1,000 signatures – 3.5 per cent of the student population in UCD – the petition will be handed to the union’s returning officer and then a referendum will be held within a two-to-four week period.
The petition’s text, which has been posted online, states: “We, the undersigned students of UCD, support the removal of the current UCDSU President from Office by Impeachment Referendum.”
Amy Crean, a spokesperson for the group behind the petition, told The University Times in an email statement that, while they have not yet collected any signatures, they had put the petition online so that “people can see the wording of what they’ll be signing, and print off themselves if they want to help collect signatures”. The group is also responsible for recent flyering in UCD, Crean said.
Crean spoke about how there was a “wide response from students to Ascough’s undemocratic behaviour”. “So we’re hopeful of support, and already have had SU members say that they are supportive and willing to sign.”
Members of the UCDSU sabbatical team declined to comment.
UCD for Choice will be supporting the group’s petition, Katie Cundelan, the Secretary of UCD for Choice, said in an email statement to The University Times.
Crean stressed that the petition, which was first reported by the University Observer, will not be seen as an “overreaction at this point”. It is no longer about Ascough’s views, she noted, but rather that Ascough has “actively gone against what she’s mandated to do and prioritised personal views over student welfare”.
“We need a president who will actively mobilise students to get involved in the campaign, to assist in getting people registered to vote”, Crean continued. “Ascough has continuously set roadblocks for UCD pro-choice affiliations and students, which is unacceptable as it goes against what she’s mandated to do in her position, but particularly so at such a vital time in the pro-choice campaign to repeal.”
In an email statement to The University Times, another member of the group, Finn McLysaght, commented that students’ unions “are inherently politicised bodies and her decision to neutralise our stance through censorship is erasing our political history”.
The petition is a response to Ascough’s unilateral decision to remove a page about access to abortion from the union’s freshers’ guide. The decision has cost the union €8,000 and has been rebuked by her fellow sabbatical officers.
Speaking to The University Times last week, four sabbatical officers condemned her decision to reprint the annual guide, after learning that a section of it contained some illegal information about access to abortion. The decision to reprint was made by Ascough alone.
Ascough, who is pro-life, sought legal advice from the union’s lawyer, Richard Hammond, after it was flagged to her that providing unsolicited information on how to access abortion abroad was illegal. She then rewrote a page containing the illegal information herself. In March, Ascough was elected promising to remain neutral on the issue and to delegate to other officers any tasks in relation to the repeal of the eighth amendment.
The freshers’ guide, Winging it, available to students from the union’s freshers’ week stand, also contained illegal information about how to remove a clamp from a car, but this information remains in the reprinted edition of the guide.
As per the legal advice given to Ascough, the maximum amount of money the union may have been liable to, were they found in breach of the Regulation of Information Act, was €4000 and “forfeiture of the offending material”.
Ascough recently announced that she would not be attending Saturday’s March for Choice, a decision that other sabbatical officers in UCDSU have described as “disappointing”. Speaking then, she explained that she had based her decision not to attend the annual demonstration on the fact that it fell outside of her office hours, as well as pointing out that others would be attending.
